Maryam
Jameelah (May 23, 1934-Oct 31,2012) was an author of over thirty books
on Islamic culture and history and a prominent female voice for
conservative Islam. Born, Margret Marcus, in New York to a non-observant
Jewish family, she explored Judaism and other faiths during her teens
before converting to Islam in 1961 and emigrating to Pakistan. She is
married to and has

five children with
Muhammad Yusuf Khan, a leader in the Jamaat-e-Islami political party,
and resides in the city of Lahore.She died early in d morning today.

At the age of 17, she wrote her first book on the life of a Palestinian refugee Ahmad Khalil.
Maryam Jameelah wrote over 70 booklets and 17 books among them
are "Western Civilization condemned by itself", "Islam and modern man",
"Who is Maudoodi?", "Orientalism", and "Western Civilizations and Man".

Maryam Jameelah was born Margaret Marcus to a Jewish family in New
Rochelle, NY, on May 23, 1934. She grew up in a secular environment, but
at the age of nineteen, while a student at New York University, she
developed a keen interest in religion.

Unable to find
spiritual guidance in her immediate environment, she looked to other
faiths. Her search brought her into contact with an array of spiritual
orders, religious cults, and world religions; she became acquainted with
Islam around 1954. She was then greatly impressed by Marmaduke
Pickthall’s The Meaning of the Glorious Koran and by the works of
Muhammad Asad, himself a convert from Judaism to Islam. Jameelah cites
Asad’s The Road to Mecca and Islam at Crossroads as critical influences
on her decision to become a Muslim.

Through her readings in
Islam she developed a bond with the religion and became a vocal
spokesperson for the faith, defending Muslim beliefs against Western
criticism and championing such Muslim causes as that of the
Palestinians. Her views created much tension in her personal life, but
she continued to pursue her cause.

She embraced Islam in New
York on May 24, 1961, and soon after began to write for the Muslim
Digest of Durban, South Africa. Her articles outlined a pristine view of
Islam and sought to establish the truth of the religion through debates
with critics. Through the journal, Jameelah became acquainted with the
works of Mawlana Sayyid Abu Ala Mawdudi, the founder of the Jamaati
Islami (Islamic Party) of Pakistan, who was also a contributor to the
journal.

Jameelah was impressed by Mawdudi’s views and began
to correspond with him. Their letters between 1960 and 1962, later
published in a volume entitled Correspondences between Maulana Mawdoodi
and Maryam Jameelah, discussed a variety of issues from the discourse
between Islam and the West, to Jameelah’s personal spiritual concerns.

Jameelah
traveled to Pakistan in 1962 on Mawdudi’s advice and joined his
household in Lahore. She soon married Muhammad Yusuf Khan, as his second
wife.

Since settling in Pakistan, she has written an
impressive number of books, which adumbrated the Jamaati Islami’s
ideology in a systematic fashion. Although she never formally joined the
party, she became one of its chief ideologists.

Jameelah has
been particularly concerned with the debate between Islam and the West,
an important, albeit not central, aspect of Mawdudi’s thought.

Her
significance, however, does not lie in the force of her observations,
but in the manner in which she articulates an internally consistent
paradigm for revivalism’s rejection of the West. In this regard, her
influence far exceeds the boundaries of the Jamaati Islami and has been
important in the development of the Muslim world.

The logic
of her discursive approach has recently led Jameelah away from
revivalism and the Jamaati Islami. Increasingly aware of revivalism’s
own borrowing from the West, she has distanced herself from the
revivalist exegesis and has even criticized her mentor Mawdudi for his
assimilation of modern concepts into Jamaati Islami’s ideology. Her
writings in recent years embody this change in orientation and reveal
the influence of traditional Islam.

Today she lives in Lahore and continues to write on Islamic thought and life.

Articles and Books Of Maryam Jameelah

1. ISLAM VERSUS THE WEST2. ISLAM AND MODERNISM3. ISLAM IN THEORY AND PRACTICE4. ISLAM VERSUS AHL AL KITAB PAST AND PRESENT5. AHMAD KHALIL6. ISLAM AND ORIENTALISM7. WESTERN CIVILIZATION CONDEMNED BY ITSELF8. CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN MAULANA MAUDOODI AND MARYUM JAMEELAH9. ISLAM AND WESTERN SOCIETY10. A MANIFESTO OF THE ISLAMIC MOVEMENT11. IS WESTERN CIVILIZATION UNIVERSAL12 WHO IS MAUDOODI ?13 WHY I EMBRACED ISLAM14 ISLAM AND THE MUSLIM WOMAN TODAY15 ISLAM AND SOCIAL HABITS16 ISLAMIC CULTURE IN THEORY AND PRACTICE17 THREE GREAT ISLAMIC MOVEMENTS IN THE ARAB WORLD OF THE RECENT PAST18 SHAIKH HASAN AL BANNA AND IKHWAN AL MUSLIMUN19 A GREAT ISLAMIC MOVEMENT IN TURKEY20 TWO MUJAHIDIN OF THE RECENT PAST AND THEIR STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM AGAINST FOREIGN RULE21 THE GENERATION GAP ITS CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES22 WESTERNIZATION VERSUS MUSLIMS23 WESTERNIZATION AND HUMAN WELFARE24 MODERN TECHNOLOGY AND THE DEHUMANIZATION OF MAN25 ISLAM AND MODERN MAN

You may read on her blog:

Thus in his first letter to me of January 1961, Maulana Maudoodi wrote:

"While i was scanning your essays. I felt as if i were reading my very
own ideas. i hope your feeling will be the same when you have the
opportunity to learn Urdu and study my books. And that despite the fact
there has been no previous acquaintance between you and me, this mutual
sympathy and unanimity in thought has resulted directly from the fact
that both of us have derived our inspiration from one and the same
source-- Islam "

Read More:

The authority of Islaamic Morals and Laws proceeds from Almighty God.
Pleasure and Happiness in Islaam are but the natural byproducts of
emotional satisfaction in one's duties conscientiously performed for the
pleasure of God to achieve salvation. In Islaam duties are always
stressed above rights. Only in Islaam was my quest for absolute values
satisfied. Only in Islaam did I at last find all that was true, good,
beautiful and which gives meaning and direction to human life and death.

Deborah Baker’s ‘The Convert’ is the true story of a Jewish girl who converted to Islam

Source:
The story of Maryam Jameelah is an extraordinary but painfully confused true tale of
a young American woman whose search for moral absolutes and emotional
security led her to abandon a middle-class Jewish upbringing in suburban
New York in the 1960s for a vastly different existence as an exile and
convert to Islam in Pakistan, where she experienced both great
intellectual productivity and deep personal conflict. Deborah Baker, who
based her account of Jameelah’s life largely on troves of
correspondence (which Jameelah gave her permission to use), calls her
story a parable of Islam and America. But it is hard to find a clear
lesson in a life whose multiple twisted strands have included bouts with
mental illness, family conflicts, irreconcilable loyalties to rival
faiths and versions of history, and ultimate disillusionment in a search
for impossible certainties about life and death.
There is much to admire in Jameelah, especially her
determination and idealistic belief in justice and a better world, which
inspired her writings and drove her relentlessly — sometimes violently —
to denounce what she saw as evil. At age 11, a bookworm with heroic
fantasies, she wrote that she planned to become a “missionary to the
Arabs. Not to convert them, but to make sure they stay just as they
are.” At 14, she dreamed of a “new golden age” where Arabs and Jews
would live in harmony, as they had in medieval Spain.

In May 1962, a 28-year-old New Yorker called Margaret Marcus set sail
for Pakistan to live the life of a Muslim in the household of Maulana
Mawdudi – ideologue and leader of the Islamic political party,
Jama’at-I-Islami. For the next 30 years, in vivid and chatty letters to
her parents back home, Margaret Marcus, or Maryam Jameelah, described
her life in Lahore and the reasons for her embrace of Islam.
Jameelah would go on to write a highly influential set of books that
attacked Western secular materialism and upheld a life lived by the laws
of the Holy Qur’an. She would become the first person to consistently
critique Western civilisation from within the paradigm of Islam.

The Convert: A Fable of Islam and America

In May 1962, a 28-year-old New Yorker called Margaret Marcus set sail
for Pakistan to live the life of a Muslim in the household of Maulana
Mawdudi – ideologue and leader of the Islamic political party,
Jama’at-I-Islami. For the next 30 years, in vivid and chatty letters to
her parents back home, Margaret Marcus, or Maryam Jameelah, described
her life in Lahore and the reasons for her embrace of Islam.
Jameelah would go on to write a highly influential set of books that
attacked Western secular materialism and upheld a life lived by the laws
of the Holy Qur’an. She would become the first person to consistently
critique Western civilisation from within the paradigm of Islam.

DEBORAH BAKER’S new book, The Convert (from
which the following excerpt is taken), tracks the astonishing journey of
this radical woman and explores the philosophical basis of the dream of
an Islamic nation.

The Convert is forthcoming from Graywolf Press.

5-A Zaildar ParkIcchra, LahorePAKISTAN

April 18, 1962

Dear Maryam Jameelah,
Assalaam-o-alaikum.
I am glad to know you have accepted my counsel and are ready to come to
Pakistan. I pray to Allah that He may guide you to what is right and in
your best interest.
I think it is advisable to mention a few things. As you must already
know, our way of life and social conditions are vastly different from
those in America. We lack many facilities and amenities that Americans
take for granted. Therefore, the first months here will certainly prove
fatiguing and taxing upon your nerves. Unless you have patience and are
resolutely determined to mould your life according to ours, to live and
die among your Muslim brethren, you might find it extremely difficult to
reconcile yourself to our ways. Although I will try my best to look
after your needs and make things easier, your steadfast cooperation is
essential.
Two of my daughters are near to you in age. One is studying for an MA
in English and the other a BA in Economics. I hope they will make
friends with you, teach you Urdu and in exchange, learn from you the
enthusiasm of a new convert. My wife does not know English. Initially,
this may hinder your intimacy with her but I hope you will pick up
enough Urdu within two or three months to enable you to communicate.
After you have learned Urdu, it will be relatively easy for you to learn
Arabic, because these languages share vocabularies. In due course, I
will also try to arrange for an Arabic teacher.
As regards marriage, I will not pressure you but should you decide to
marry, I will try to help you choose a suitable life partner. Naturally
you will want to be married to a youth who lives as a good Pakistani
Muslim. If you choose not to marry, I am prepared to welcome you forever
as a member of my family. I am inviting you to share my hospitality in
the spirit with which the early Muslim inhabitants of Medina had
extended their invitation to their forlorn brethren outside of Medina
and I wish you to respond with a similar spirit of migration, thinking
that bonds of faith are firmer and stronger than relationships of flesh
and blood.
There is still another reason why you should postpone any decision
about marriage. When you arrive, my wife will train you in how a
Pakistani Muslim wife runs her home and manages her household affairs.
This knowledge will stand you in good stead when you are facing married
life. For such a marital relationship to achieve success, it is
essential to learn the social etiquette of Muslim families.
When you reach Lahore, daytime temperatures average well over 100
degrees F. Our houses are not air-conditioned but we do use electric
fans. Eventually you will become accustomed to our tropical seasons but
you must be prepared to bear the first onslaught of this extreme
climate.
You should bring with you all necessary belongings. Due to heavy
customs duties, foreign products are very expensive here. Do not assume
that such things can be easily replaced.
I am writing a separate letter to your parents. I advise you to
introduce me to them yourself and show them some of my letters so they
may be able to grasp fully the background of my present letter to them.
Your brother in Islam,
ABUL ALA

Larchmont Acres Apartments, Apt 223-CMamaroneck, NYUSA

May 2, 1962

Dear Mr. Mawdudi,
I am grateful for your kind letter of April 18th, extending to my
daughter, Margaret, an invitation to live in your home. My wife and I
are deeply moved by your gracious offer of hospitality.
Since embracing Islam, particularly as an ardent convert, it seems that
living in our society presents practical difficulties. Margaret is
eager to accept your invitation and as her parents, we are ready to give
her our consent although it means going to live in a distant land.
Especially in view of the zeal she has shown, we are hopeful this would
give her the opportunity for a happy and meaningful life.
Coming to a country with such a different culture will surely require
much forbearance during a period of adjustment. With the sympathy and
understanding indicated in your letters combined with Margaret’s ardor, I
am confident that her entrance into your family life will be
successful.
I was pleased to note in your letter to Margaret the advice regarding
change of citizenship and marriage. It is my paternal wish that she took
irrevocable steps only after a reasonable period of residence.
She goes to your country with our blessings and we shall maintain our
continuing interest in her welfare. Therefore please feel at liberty to
write to me about her at any time.
Mrs. Marcus joins me in conveying to you, your wife and children our heartfelt gratitude.
Very sincerely,
Herbert S. Marcus